I have many friends who run their own startups that ask me when they need to register with the HMRC to begin filing their taxes and when they need to file full set of accounts with Companies House. The answer to both of these questions depends on one thing: is your company dormant? The general […]

Do you want to know how to lower the taxes that your business pays? One of the ways to do this is by claiming Capital Allowances. Capital allowances are essentially ‘depreciation’ of assets, but for tax purposes. In any typical business, there are generally two types of expenses – Operational expenses: routine costs that a […]

The concept of “Accounting Period” is fairly easy to understand. Simply put, it’s the period for which you report your financials (i.e. annual financial statements). However, not many business owners fully understand how this relates to their tax filing period. In general, your company’s tax filing period should align with your accounting period. This makes it […]

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, if you are self employed (also known as “sole trader” in the UK), you have more tax benefits than you would have as an employee. One of these major tax benefits is that you can deduct certain expenses from your gross annual income, hence reducing the total […]

So you have thought of a great new business idea, and you have decided to build a new startup based on it. But now what? What are the key considerations to think about when setting up a new business? I know that there are probably thousands of things on your mind right now, but one […]

As the first post on my new blog, I thought that I should share with you some of my thoughts on why I chose to write a blog about Accounting for startups. I grew up in a family of accountants. My grandfather worked as an accountant in the Finance department of the provincial Chinese government […]